TownTravis.com

Prometheus, my polydactyl kitten.

I have a job now. That is, someone is sending me several checks in return for a series of tasks that I shall perform. Which is, I guess, a job. I hope it develops into something more tangible. Or I discover a rich uncle. Of course, literary uncles are always rich and benevolent, or evil. There are no gray areas when it comes to uncles.

What with being bitten by centipedes and immersed in Hemingway kittens, I have most likely neglected my duties as a blog owner. After all, I didn’t buy the domain for three years in advance for it just to sit here looking pretty. Had I blogged in the past few days/weeks, I probably would have contributed my two cent’s worth about the new iPhone. Love the software update, since it has most everything I asked for. If AT&T gets its ass in gear, the MMS messaging will be amazing. So will the video camera. But I wish Apple would give me some damn keys already. Real keys. And a flip phone. At least it seems I have an iPhone upgrade on my AT&T account.

I’m probably a bad journalist. I pick and choose the news I read, and more and more often I ignore the traditional news outlets, preferring instead to glean my knowledge of current events from Twitter. So I’m not as giddy about the Iran elections as everyone else seems to be. But, nevertheless, it’s pretty fascinating. And go Twitter!

Now I think I’ll eat the homemade yogurt that’s been culturing all day.

Last night I was bitten by a centipede.

While living in cities for most of the past six years, I forgot how frequently country life revolves around animals. Raccoons eating on the front porch. Baby birds or bunnies rescued from cats. Turtles injured on the highway. Polydactyl kittens. And it’s not uncommon for a centipede or a scorpion to find its way up drain pipes or through crevices into the house.

It’s a testament to the pervasiveness of social networking media (or perhaps merely my own obsession with it) that upon being bitten, immediately after cursing, I reached for my iPhone, snapped a picture of my assailant and tweeted about the incident.

Ironically, my reading material for the day was my favorite of the James Bond series, Dr. No. Indeed, I had just reached the very chapter (”The Finger on the Trigger”) in which Bond endures the harrowing travels of a six-inch tropical centipede from his feet up his body, across his face and onto the pillow where his head rests. (In the film version, it was a tarantula.) Of course, unlike Bond, I was in no danger from the centipede. The affected area on the palm of my right hand merely turned red and hurt for a few hours.

My mother’s calico cat is having kittens today, fathered by a stray polydactyl or “Hemingway” tabby-colored cat. Ironically, last year I wrote an article for Sci Q magazine about the history and nature of polydactyls.

The litter so far:

1. Mojo – Orange and white kitten with the normal number of toes on all but its left front foot. That foot has one extra toe. I didn’t know polydactyly could occur that way. Very strange. extra toes on both front feet, normal number on back feet (the extra toe on the right front foot wasn’t immediately visible).
2. Ernest – Black (or tabby; it’s hard to tell when they are newborn and covered with blood) Tabby with extra toes on both front feet. Normal number on back feet.
3. Prometheus – Black (or tabby) Tabby and white with extra toes on all four feet. (Pictured in close-up.)
4. Atropos – Another tabby and white with extra toes on all four feet. This one was born dead.
5. Safari – Last kitten, mostly orange with some white, extra toes on front feet only.

I’ve often thought of recording a video and posting it here. However, since I moved back to my mother’s house I’ve been staying in my old room, which received a new paint job in my 5-year absence and is no longer fitting for a 25-year-old boy to call home. My mom painted it a shade of pink or salmon or whatever. If I were female, I’d probably instinctively know the name. Anyway, it would be slightly embarrassing for my debut video appearance on TownTravis.com to feature a pink background.

In other news, today I removed all the interesting details from my Facebook profile. No longer does it reveal my gender, relationship status, sexual proclivities (”interested in”), etc. This alteration was the advance party for the possible deletion of my Facebook account. *gasp* It just doesn’t do it for me anymore. I use Twitter for my friend updates, and I’m not really close with those friends who have only Facebook and not Twitter. Furthermore, it annoys me that I have to employ a Stylish script to remove the damned ads and promotions from my Facebook homepage. If my Facebook friends and I really want to keep up with one another’s lives, wouldn’t we just email or call? Maybe I’ll retire from the FB, maybe not.

And, to close out the night, here’s an excerpt from a Gmail conversation with a female friend, illustrating my delightful sarcasm in the face of serious topics:

I began reading Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, this morning and have only put it down briefly throughout the day; I shall assuredly finish reading it tonight. The writing is excellent, and I could extol any number of quotes from its pages. However, this one in particular caught my attention, as it voices a thought that has often been my own during the past several years:

“They spoke of a heaven, where once we all lived and died,
sentenced for our sins to this pandemonium we call the world.”

Verily, it could be. Perhaps we are all already dead. We traverse unknowing in our death, deluded to believe that it is life and that we may yet attain Heaven, for without that hope we would surely descend into madness. Like the foolish dead spirits encountered by Memnoch in Anne Rice’s Memnoch the Devil, we have constructed a world of beauty and pleasure out of the meaningless void that is truly our abode. Those who are most fearful of reality are the most ardent disciples of religion. They cannot accept the truth that they are dead, so they seek to sway all the Dead to give in to their lie. Many find no solace in fairy tales and, in fact, need none. They know what they are and find no shame in it. The time for shame and regret has passed. If such a thing is truly our fate, then we lived our lives and reveled in our sins and now we must pay the piper. We are dead and this is Hell.

James Bond sleeps with a gun under his pillow. I sleep with my iPhone. Ergo, I wake up whenever the sleek device vibrates in my hand to announce a new email. Last night’s email was from one of my Medill friends, providing an update on her post-grad activities and requesting similar information in return. I sent her a paragraph this morning, but it’s likely that others might want to know what I’m doing as well – in more detail than one could glean from between the lines in what I’ve previously posted. So here it is.

I interviewed in December 2008 for a “Gadgets” internship with Wired magazine. The interview, with products editor Mark McClusky and associate editor Joe Brown, went well and I was apparently one of the top choices for the internship; however, I was not hired for it. In addition I have applied for jobs/internships with: Texas Monthly (which I haven’t followed up on in quite a while, since Evan Smith never returns email), Amazon (hoping to work with the Kindle), Facebook, and numerous editing positions with magazines and publishing companies. Results? Nada. (Truthfully, in the footsteps of my grandfather, I was hired as an editor for a vanity press… but the pay/work ratio was atrocious.)

The past few months have been increasingly boring, although admittedly restful. I occassionally work on The Cinder Path, my book about my grandparents. However, after almost 20 rejection letters, my faith that it is worthwhile is difficult to maintain. My mother has an entire bookshelf filled with notebooks, which contain the handwritten evidence of her life’s work – a 10-part saga. It’s really, really good; bestseller quality if I ever saw it. Unfortunately, in order to seek publication, she must have it typed. So I’ve been helping out with that from time to time. Otherwise, my time is spent reading (currently Jean M. Auel’s Earth’s Children series), watching movies, working on my mom’s property, etc. Not the most exciting period of my life.

I have no idea what my next move will be. Aside from all the things I’ve already applied for, I’ve considered returning to school. Maybe a Ph.d. in soc. Maybe med school. Who knows. It’s too late in the year to apply for much in that area. I want to live in Texas, but would settle for Arizona, California, or Washington. I’m too particular about my writing to work for your run-of-the-mill news organization, so unless I’m hired by one of the few magazines I respect, I doubt I’d be happy as a traditional journalist. I like technology, but I don’t have enough certifications to work in most tech jobs. I like editing. I like books. I like blogging and Twitter. I have a B.A. in sociology. So where does that leave me?

If it weren’t for my massive student loans, I’d be content to work on my own projects indefinitely, while pursuing other interests (I want to buy a kayak). However, my wallet grows slimmer every day, yet bills continue to arrive. I’m not overly concerned. Things have always worked out for me in the past and I imagine they will again.

Love always,
Town

This is a great (although lengthy!) read on morality, atonement and Chaos Theory, among other things. Yes, the discussion revolves around the vampires of the Twilight series, but even if you aren’t fortunate enough to enjoy those books, this offers some intriguing ideas. You should really read the entire post, via Twilight Lexicon, but here’s a brief sample:

Thirsty vampires are in acute physical pain. It is comparable to the feel of a third degree burn inside your throat. It can make a vampire literally crazy for relief—beyond thought. If your hand was on fire and there was a bucket of ice water beside you, would you resist that relief? Of course not. You would have no reason to. Back to the average vampire’s viewpoint, neither does a vampire have a reason to resist. There is a fire, he or she quenches it. Problem, solution. … If you knew that by putting out the fire on your hand you would be killing someone else, would you really be able to think clearly enough while burning to stop yourself? Could you burn for a stranger? Maybe. We all want to believe that we’d be able to be that strong. But it’s hard to know what we would be capable of if our hand actually was in flames.
- Stephenie Meyer

(P.S. This always happens. I post something about a hiatus from blogging, and inevitably, my muse disregards that intention and comes knocking.)

It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking: How did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue. And maybe we can actually never have it, no matter what. How did he know that?
- The Pursuit of Happyness